TBWA, The Disruption company, has appointed its first ever Chief Product Officer in a move that cements the marriage between the depth of its global specialisms across the total brand experience, with the deep integration required to deliver on the future needs of clients.
Deepthi Prakash, previously Global Director, Product and Marketing, has been elevated to lead the implementation of an ambitious programme of product expansion, covering the future-facing components of a full-service, multi-disciplinary brand solution.
According to Forrester’s 2022 Marketing Survey, 56% of B2C marketing decision-makers indicate that they now have primary responsibility for the customer experience function of their business. “As CMO’s across the industry evolve into Chief Experience Officers, their focus is shifting from capturing existing demand to creating new stickiness for a brand in all the ways it interacts with its customers. Only a creative innovation partner with a suite of specialisms aggregated around a single, powerful brand idea, can deliver the total experience those clients need today,” says Prakash.
TBWA has acquired or grown specialisms across all the touchpoints of a brand, derived from the creative capabilities and strengths of the Collective’s best-in-class agencies. In fact, over a third of TBWA Asia’s revenue today comes from specialisms that didn’t exist 3 years ago. Just as with McDonald’s tapping the NEXT unit inside TBWA as a Marketing Innovation partner, growth across the Collective has been driven by disciplines that go beyond the confines of traditional communications.
Among the products being rolled out globally are:
- NEXT is a cutting-edge innovation practice. It generates, prototypes, develops, and leverages what’s new in technology in a brand consistent way to extend clients into new spaces, channels, and experiences.
- Plex by TBWA helps complex and B2B companies simply and impactfully communicate a brand’s value proposition, and brings it to life through marketing, sales enablement, internal communications, events and design.
- Inside is an offering that interprets a company’s brand platform for its most important audience: its employees. This includes development of an employee value proposition alongside how a brand comes to life for its employees through experience strategy, events, and design.
- Sold enables retail clients to develop brand campaigns and promotions that work together to drive growth. This offering aligns brand strategy and brand marketing with retail/store/social/ecommerce promotions and scaled production.
Creating flexibility in operating and remuneration models sits at the heart of this product-focused approach, says Prakash. “Our industry has, for too long, been working within the confines of a one-size-fits-all, out-of-date model, that is misaligned with the value and impact of our work. We know that to continue to drive the record global growth we have delivered in the past two years for TBWA, we must disrupt the way our industry operates, and ensure that our pricing is commensurate with the value we drive.”
TBWA Global CEO, Troy Ruhanen believes the advent of the Chief Product Officer is a key milestone – setting the standard for others to follow, “As Disruption is our common thread throughout all we do, so must we challenge the conventions in our own industry. Our specialisms have been growing through our brilliant local agencies, now we are applying our collective muscle to making, nurturing and evolving them into the products that will truly deliver for our clients on a global scale. Deepthi embodies the restlessness and energy of TBWA, so is the perfect person to drive this next phase of our evolution.”
Deepthi Prakash joined TBWA in February 2020 from Cognizant, where she served as Co-Head of Cognizant Interactive and Global Head of Strategy & Design. While there, she successfully delivered growth by packaging skills in insight, strategy, design, content, and technology into services and offerings that spoke to client needs. Prior to Cognizant, she was Managing Director at Accenture Interactive, where she led the content planning practice.
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